The Federal Bureau of Investigation had two major roles in the life of the late Benjamin Hooks, the lifelong civil rights activist and NAACP director who died in 2010.

The FBI investigated multiple threats against the life of Hooks, who directed the country’s oldest civil rights organization from 1977 to 1992. They also had a confidential informant photograph Hooks (and other civil rights activists) in the wake of the shooting of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and later did an extensive background check on Hooks — as a White House nominee — flagging his alleged ties to communists and noted his involvement in fried chicken restaurants which went bankrupt.

Hooks was one of the individuals present at a meeting following the assassination of King, and was one of those photographed by famed civil rights photographer Ernest Withers on the night MLK was assassinated.